You Report to Me: Accountability for the Failing Administrative State

In this firsthand account, David Bernhardt, 53rd Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior, describes how he witnessed firsthand the administrative state's transformation from a collection of departments under the command of the President into a sprawling and unaccountable bureaucracy.

“Resistance” to the Trump presidency within the civil service drew media attention, but it was only part of a larger problem: a federal bureaucracy that often goes its own way, contrary to the policies of elected leadership. In this insider’s account, David L. Bernhardt reveals how the bureaucratic swamp really operates and how unaccountable power has been concentrated deep within the administrative state, resulting in dysfunction.

Executive agencies were created to implement legislation and presidential directives, yet career civil servants use them to advance their own agendas instead. Congress often writes laws broadly, letting subject-matter experts at administrative agencies fill in the details with regulations. Then, agency employees sometimes substitute their own policy preferences for actual statutory or regulatory language. They may also fail to appreciate that their authority is delegated from an official who answers to the president. Bernhardt gives examples of federal employees undermining the administration’s policies simply by refusing to work on a task, slow-walking it, or doing a subpar job.

Administrative agencies have further gained power through judicial deference to an agency’s own interpretation of a statute when its enforcement action is challenged. Courts essentially abdicate their role of interpreting the law, leaving citizens with little recourse against penalties or prohibitions. Both legislative and judicial powers have thus been shifted to the executive branch, where they are exercised without adequate political oversight.

Drawing on his experiences working under two administrations, Bernhardt explains how President Trump’s enabling leadership showed a path for reining in the administrative state. He calls on political leadership to turn off autopilot and take control of their agencies, and on Congress and the judiciary to assert their constitutional authority, before an unaccountable federal bureaucracy destroys the Founders’ vision of government by consent of the governed.

DAVID BERNHARDT is the only person to ever be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as secretary, deputy secretary, and solicitor of the Department of the Interior in its 173+-year history. The Department of the Interior is a cabinet department with an asset portfolio that exceeds $300 billion, a budget that exceeds $16 billion, and nearly 70,000 employees. Bernhardt served as the 53^rd Secretary of the Interior under President Donald J. Trump. He also served for nearly eight years as a political appointee within the George W. Bush administration at Interior and as the Commissioner to the International Boundary, U.S. and Canada. 

David grew up in the rural western Colorado community of Rifle and he is an avid hunter and angler. He is married to Gena Bernhardt, and they have a son, William, and a daughter, Katherine. He resides in Arlington Virginia, with his wife, daughter, a yellow Labrador retriever, and a cat.